Saturday, January 17, 2015

I live and write in a small village about thirty miles upstate of NYC, and share my home with my wife, Bonnie and our dog Alfie, an apricot poodle.

When I began writing in 1980, I had no idea where I was headed. Since then, I've published thirty-five novels, thirty-three of them with traditional publishers, but I decided I wanted more freedom than the traditional publishers would allow and began a new phase in my life as an Independent Author.

My first Independent novel Angels In Mourning, was my 'homage' to the old time private detective books of the late 40's, 50's and 60's. I used to love to sneak them from my parents’ night-tables and read them as a young boy. Angels, is a modern day take on the old style hardboiled detective. Angels In Mourning won the Amazon.com Book of the Month Reader's Choice Award shortly after it was published.

My most current thriller, The Cured, was written with Terese Ramin.The idea for this Medical Thriller came shortly after the death of a close friend. I couldn't help but wonder about the medication....

My previous suspense thrillers are The Hyte Maneuver, (a Literary guild alternate selection); As Peace Lay Dying, Conspiracy of Mirrors, And Down will Come Baby, Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep, and Shadows.

Being both a thriller and a science fiction writer, this was a big quandary for me: which level of thriller, of mystery, of suspense did I want to look at? I thought about Blade Runner, (Philip Dick’s Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep) The pressured against his will Detective Deker, played by Harrison Ford, was great, the movie, not terrible but…. Then I thought of someone else and the answer was easy.

The first Robert Ludlum book I read—too many years ago—was The Chancellor Manuscript and it made me a lifelong fan and reader of Ludlum. The book blew me away on two levels; as a reader, and as a writer. There were things Ludlum put into this book that made me, as a writer, sit up and take notice.

But translating mystery and thriller novel protagonists to the screen never quite seems to work as well as an original screenplay. Yet, when I saw Ludlum’s The Bourne Identity, I knew they’d hit it right, as far as the part Matt Damon played.

While almost everything about the movie was different from the book, (in fact only the first half hour, the ship’s doctor and the names Jason Bourne and Marie were the same as the book) it made no difference as far as enjoying the movie and being inside Jason Bourne’s head. For me, that was unusual because if I loved the book, I wanted the movie to have as much semblance to the book as possible.

There is no way to properly translate the Bourne Series to the screen the way it was written, but watching Matt Damon play Jason Bourne was a treat. While Damon is younger than the Bourne was in the book and the time period was changed as well it didn’t matter. If it’s truly possible for an actor to nail a fictional hero, then Damon did just that. He did what Ludlum did, suspended the disbelief and sucked you right into the story. He showed his angst, his confusion, the need to get to the bottom of, not just who her was, but how he got there and why. Ludlum puts levels and levels of misdirection into his stories to keep you on the edge of your chair. The movie wasn't as highly structured as a Ludlum novel, Damon put those levels into himself, and made you sit on the edge of your seat while you watched him go through his changes.

Damon played the part with every ounce of his talent and only when the movie ended, was the audience able to catch their breath.

That’s what I like in a movie made from a book, the same thing I get when I read and when I write. Having the experience of living within the words, of seeing and hearing and breathing what happens on the pages and becoming part of the world I hold in my hands.

Angels In Mourning

by David Wind

Angels In Morning, takes private detective Gabriel Storm from the theatres of Broadway, through the alleys of Hell’s Kitchen to Miami’s ‘Little Cuba’ and onward to the U.S. Senate in his drive to find the killer of his close childhood friend, Scotty Granger, considered to be the best playwright of the modern generation.

Early one morning, Gabe is summoned to his friend’s apartment by the NYPD, and told Scotty Granger has been murdered in a botched burglary attempt—the murder occurs while his newest play is in rehearsal. Unwilling to believe this theory, Gabe begins his own investigation, which centers on the "angels" who have invested in the show and an unknown woman whom Scotty has been seeing.

Working with his friend, Captain Christopher Bolt, the head of the Mayor’s Special Crimes Task Force, Storm follows a warped path of suspects from Scotty Granger’s Angels – the show’s investors – to pimps and prostitutes before descending into the twisted sub-culture of sexual predators and following paths that reach all the way to Washington’s law makers. We discover that Scotty Granger’s sister, Elizabeth, a victim of a predator, was abducted at the age of eight and has never been found: When Scotty became successful, he created an organization to help children abducted by pedophiles or lured from their homes by predators.

The action moves quickly as Storm pursues the illusive killer by using a network of people who are part of the killer's world. Working both alone and with the FBI, Homeland Security, a mafia connection and the NYPD, Storm navigates the twisted trails and unlikely suspects who populate the story from Wall Street financiers to pimps and gangsters and a U.S. senator, on the road to an unexpected, suspenseful and surprising conclusion.

When over 4000 people world-wide died after taking a cure for cancer, the drug was recalled. But the questions kept coming. Was it contamination? Was it sabotage? Or, was it outright murder by an insane research scientist in retaliation against the pharmaceutical giant he worked for and to avenge the death of his wife?

When the 911 code flashed across her beeper, Doctor Kira Brockman went cold. The one thing she had been dreading had happened and her life as she knew it had
been changed, and the change was for the worst!

The wrong people had found her father!

She knew she had very little time to get out of the hospital, to find her brother and to run before Homeland Security and the FBI found them, and they were not the only ones: the lawyers who were in the midst of a huge class action suit against the international pharmaceutical manufacturing giant who had sold the cancer cure wanted her and the evidence she had as well as the lethal security team from the drug company who was trying to stop Kira Brockman from disclosing the evidence only she could get—evidence that would save her father—and they would use any means necessary to stop her.

I was born and came of age on the mean city streets of New Jersey. As a young man, I served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, which included a year in Vietnam. After that, I began a career as a computer professional in California’s Silicon Valley.

Since quitting the workaday world to pursue my passion for writing, I've authored six novels, a collection of stories, and a memoir, titled The Way I Saw It. I've written other books, too, that never saw the light of the published world, when I was young and still learning the craft.

My novels include the three volume City Different mystery series, set in Santa Fe, NM, available individually on Amazon, and recently released as a complete Boxed Set, titled The City Different Series. Separately, the three volumes of the series are City Different, Nina’s Time, and Finding Nina. I've also published three other novels of contemporary life, the collection of stories and the memoir mentioned above.

Currently, I divide my time between New Mexico's Land of Enchantment and Orange County, California, pursuing the craft of a writer of contemporary fiction, mystery/suspense and crime/thrillers.

I write humorous mysteries about an annoyingly tenacious tall, blonde and beautiful, ex-model turned crop-duster who, to quote Lalla Bains, says: “I've been married so many times they oughta revoke my license.” I wanted to give readers a peek at a not so-perfect life of a woman who is not afraid of chipping her manicure because she doesn't have time for a manicure, what with herding a bunch of recalcitrant pilots and juggling work orders just to keep her father’s flagging business alive.

Beginning with #4 in the series, A Dead Red Alibi, Lalla and her family will reside in South East Arizona where she will divide her time between a fledgling P.I. business with cousin, Pearlie Bains, and volunteering as a team member with Cochise County Search and Rescue.

I also write a romantic sailing mystery trilogy: A Dangerous Harbor and Hurricane Hole. Coming in 2015: Dead Rise

Through her various occupations, Abby discovered her love of writing. She’d always been told she had a gift for telling stories, combining the two, she became an author.

Her debut novel, the mystery/sci-fi, In the Beginning, was an Amazon #1 bestseller, it was written on a whim, packed away, and rediscovered some twelve years later. After publishing it in 2013, Abby decided to make writing a full-time endeavor. She penned three novels since - two stand alone sequels and a historical/women’s fiction novel that she co-wrote under the pen name Kathryn Longino. Abby hopes to publish another historical novel, and a paranormal romance story in 2015.

Abby, a former lawyer and college professor, has a degree in Economics, a masters in Public Administration, and a Juris Doctor. A lifetime resident of Cleveland, Ohio, Abby spends all of her time writing and enjoying her three wonderful grandchildren.

Kerry was born in Dublin. He spent most of his life in the UK, and now lives in Brittany with his wife of thirty-seven years. He has three children and three grandchildren, all of whom live in England and all of whom think he’s nice (strange the way that works out). An absentee granddad, Kerry praises the advent of video conferencing.

I former lives, Kerry has been a furniture designer/cabinet maker, a research scientist, a house restorer, and now spends all.most of his time writing crime thrillers and what he likes to call adventure yarns. He recently topped the Amazon UK bestseller genre list for his paranormal thriller, The Transition of Johnny Swift.

There are currently two book in his DCI Jones Casebook series and a new addition is due out in the New Year.

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5 comments:

Stephen Hazlett here. Loved your guest post, David. Movies from books: Robert Ludlum and "The Bourne Identity." It doesn't get any better than that. Congrats on being a part of a great group, eNovel Authors at Work.

Great post, David! I moved into my new house a few months back and I found a box of Robert Ludlum books, including the Bourne Identity. I just tucked them away. After this post I will be pulling them out and reading them! Can't wait to read your books.

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